Multiple Choice

MultiBootUSB and MultiSystem tools transfer multiple Live systems to a USB flash drive and even install a matching boot manager automatically.

Many Live systems serve specific purposes, such as rescuing data, launching web servers, and so on. It seems logical, then, to accommodate several systems side by side on a USB stick. Such a multiboot system would prepare you for any eventuality and, as a side effect, use the ample space on today's USB sticks in a meaningful way.

Setting up such a USB stick is the domain of MultiBootUSB [1] and MultiSystem [2]. Both of these tools not only copy the desired Live systems onto the stick, they also automatically set up a boot menu from which you can easily select one of the distributions. Although MultiBootUSB and MultiSystem solve the same task, they differ significantly with respect to operations, functionality, and individual quirks.

Before you can use MultiBootUSB and MultiSystem, you first need to download the desired Live systems as ISO images. Add up the size of all the ISO images and a safety margin of 100MB, and this is the amount of space you need on the USB flash drive.